First frog found on Antarctica

Two small fossilized bones, one from the skull and a hip bone, now show for the first time that there have been frogs in Antarctica. They lived 40 million years ago in a climate that was much warmer than it is today.

"There are two tiny bone pieces of a frog, and it shows that frogs have been found on all continents of the earth," says Thomas Mörs, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum.

Thomas Mörs made the discovery with a group of Argentine and Swiss paleontologists on the Antarctic island of Seymour and they present their results in this week's Scientific Reports.

The frog belongs to the family Calyptocephalellidae and has its closest living relatives in the Chilean Andes. There it is now about the same climate as it was on the island of Seymour 40 million years ago. During the coldest month it was then on average 4 degrees warm and during the hottest 14 degrees warm.

In addition, the frog also now has living relatives in Australia.

 - 40 million years ago, Antarctica was part of the Gondwana continent, which then consisted of South America, Antarctica and Australia, says Thomas Mörs.

On the Antarctic island, paleontologists have also found fossils from marsupials and waterlilies and the tree southern leaf that thrives in humid environments.

The frogs on Seymour lived a few million years before the Antarctic cooled down and became completely covered.

- We know that there were glaciers on the mountain peaks at the time, but it was still warm enough for cold-blooded animals like frogs to thrive, he says.

Today, the island of Seymour is a cold and windy place. Wildlife is not as multifaceted as it was 40 million years ago, but the animals that still live tend to be healthy.

- The penguins come and look at us as we work. They are very curious, says Thomas Mörs.